Impressions from MWC 2012 a.k.a. "This Is My Next"

Although I'm self-proclaimed mobile gadgets maniac, somehow I don't usually follow major events in the industry as closely as someone could think. However, since I consider getting a new smartphone to replace my current HTC Desire Z sometime soon'ish, I was keeping an extra eye on the recent happenings in Barcelona where Mobile World Congress took place.

HTC Flyer vs. Archos 80 G9 - thoughts and impressions

I didn't really consider changing my tablet anytime soon, as I was quite happy with Archos 80 G9 which I've got around October. But there was that ridiculous Christmas clearance of the HTC Flyer tablet at DSG stores (PCWorld, Dixons and Currys) here in the UK recently and you know... it just happened by itself. ;) When the clearance was pretty much over everywhere, I've somehow managed to bag (in fact, my wife did) a WiFi-only unit, the very last one from the display in Dixons nearby. Phew!

Sony Ericsson Xperia pro - thoughts and review

My recent involvement as an author in Coolsmartphone technology blog has opened an opportunity to get my hands dirty with mobile gadgets I'd probably never had chance to play with. One of the latest example was Sony Ericsson Xperia pro - a full-sized hardware qwerty handset, powered by Android Gingerbread due to receive Ice Cream Sandwich soon.

Judging by nowadays standards Xperia pro perhaps isn't the most compelling handset out there, yet it is still very good looking, reasonably specced and reliable handset, sporting fantastic hardware qwerty keyboard too. Official upgrade to ICS just behind the corner is surely a huge plus too. Considering that combination doesn't really occur often in Android world, Xperia pro is definitely worth a shot, especially with very attractive £272 price tag at Handtec.

I've written up a full review at Coolsmartphone, so read on if interested.

Archos 80 G9 review

Despite being declared gadget maniac, somehow I never really got into tablets. When the first iPad came out and whole hype began, I regarded it as overly-expensive gadget having virtually no practical use to me. Yet quite recently I've started changing my mind towards tablets. I thought they could be good use not only for general web browsing but also for reading articles or e-books more comfortably than on 3-inch-odd display of my phone, playing YouTube videos to my one-and-a-half-year-old daughter (excellent WAF bumper, btw) or just checking various stuff on the web quickly without getting a laptop out. Still, I regarded tablets too expensive for my needs and looked for a budget solution. Thankfully, my search for tablet coincided with release of Archos 80 G9 which promised Android Honeycomb on top of fairly good specification within £200 budget. Seemed like perfect match, so I decided to get one straight away.

Nokia X7, E6 and Symbian Anna - first impressions

Thanks to the great people at WOMWorld/Nokia (as usual lately ;), I have been lucky enough to get my hands on the latest and greatest Nokia offerings in Symbian world - the new Nokia X7 and E6 which were officially unveiled to the world yesterday morning.

Demonstration was carried out in WOMWorld's headquarters in London by Nokia product managers. They brought few prototype devices to show off and give us to play with. So what are the first impressions?

Changing Android's UI default font

I've been recently tipped by haerwu about Font Changer app for rooted Android devices that lets you change Android's user interface default font. I gave it a try and I must say different font makes huge impact on UI "sexiness". See yourself below.

5mpix camera shoot-out: HTC Desire Z vs. Nokia N900 vs. Nokia E72

I've been taking quite a lot of photos with Nokia N900 earlier and even if I didn't regard their quality as the best ever, these shots were just fine and perfectly acceptable for less important occasions to me. However, ever since I've got HTC Desire Z in my hands, I was quite baffled with its camera quality. Main thought was along the lines of is this really that bad or is it just bad impression?

So I went and did totally non-scientific and hugely subjective comparison of camera capabilities of the most modern mobile devices I currently have at hand: HTC Desire Z, Nokia N900 and Nokia E72, all of which have 5 megapixel camera sensors. Results were, frankly, quite surprising to me.

Nokia N900 vs. HTC Desire Z

So it happened - after almost a year spent with Nokia N900 as a default phone, I have now switched to Android in the form of HTC Desire Z. Being long-standing user and fan of Maemo (since N8x0), immediate switch to whole new platform naturally brings incentive for direct comparison, so here it is.

Santa came early this year...

...and brought me a brand new, unlocked, SIM-free HTC Desire Z today. Yay! Seems like Santa was taking very close look to my rant about Android vs. N900/Maemo I wrote less than two months ago - thanks Santa! Anyway, I am going to use Desire Z as a primary phone from now on, yet I'm not letting my beloved N900 anywhere either and let's say I'm putting it in "standby" mode as a secondary phone. Nonetheless, it will be interesting to see how these two devices directly compare and what I'll specifically miss from Maemo world in Android.

Android makes me cry

I have been using Nokia N900 as a primary mobile phone for nearly a year now and I am quite happy with it. However, quite recently I've also bought the best value-for-money Android 2.1 device you can currenly get, which is Orange San Francisco aka ZTE Blade. I won't go in too much details about the phone itself, as anyone could easily look it up, but if you're after joining Android world cheaply, yet without much (any?) compromise in hardware area, then ZTE Blade is definitely way to go. Anyway, I have never intended new phone to replace my N900 because of lack of hardware qwerty keyboard which I'm very addicted to, nonetheless I gave it a shot and put my main SIM card into it for few days. That experience made me cry and I'm just about to tell you why...

Polska klawiatura ekranowa i T9 w HTC Magic - HOWTO

Zachodziłem w głowę tu i ówdzie jak mojego angielskojęzycznego HTC Magica zmusić do poprawnej obsługi polskich znaków diakrytycznych w klawiaturze ekranowej oraz słowniku T9, a tymczasem - jak to zwykle bywa - najciemniej pod latarnią.

The Magic of Nokia E71

If I was ever trying to find the right way of describing differences between Nokia E71 and HTC Magic, I'd say that E71 is like loving, caring and hard-working but not-so-beautiful wife, while Magic is hot and sexy wamp, ready to please you in any way you want, but not care about you much after that.

HTC Magic as a default phone - final day

It's been a while since last update, as I wasn't able to write new posts recently. My Android & me experiment has officially ended today, and I switched back to Nokia E71. However, to be honest, I haven't done that without a hesitation. HTC Magic has something magic, something that don't let the user off easily. Anyway, I've been still using Magic as a default phone over past few days and I have few points to note before concluding my experiment.

HTC Magic as a default phone - day three

W00t! I found the way of enabling predictive text feature for Polish language! In fact, it was dead simple - just a matter of changing system locale/language to Polish. :) Strangely, keyboard language selection box hasn't Polski option to choose, which was putting me off earlier. But now I have double checked this and prediction works fine in my native language, despite the lack of the option - well, these are some odd quirks of using non-official ROM firmware. Anyway, I wonder whether that discovery is going to convert me to on-screen keyboard now? I guess not, but hopefully typing text will get painful. Time will tell, and I will tell here later what time said.

HTC Magic as a default phone - day two

Yet another day with HTC Magic as my default mobile phone, as I must admit I'm starting to get used to it. Even battery was behaving rather well overnight this time (99% to just 90%). Overall, Magic is very pleasant device, and quite frankly I really enjoy using it on daily basis. It has very nice look & feel, clean, crisp and sensitive, yet not over-sensitive, touch screen, and generally that is a quite appealing piece of hardware. However, there's one thing I really really hate. Text input. Oh, yes...

HTC Magic as a default phone - day one

Magic did wake me up this morning. Good. What I wasn't very impressed about was the battery charge level. From 99% at 11:30pm the night before it went all the way down to 79% in less than 8 hours later, with auto-sync feature turned off (!). What was it doing all night? Don't know, but apparently not sleeping. I need to review the idea of applications like Facebook and/or Twitter clients running constantly in background. However, quite fortunate thing about the power supply in HTC Magic is that re-charging the battery is actually quite fast.

Android & me experiment: using HTC Magic as a default phone - day zero

I am a huge fan of mobile phones with full QWERTY keyboards. It all started with HTC Wizard back in 2005, then HTC Hermes, HTC Kaiser, then I've fallen in love with Blackberry-style form factor and followed with Samsung i780 to finally end up with excellent Nokia E71. I've been using E71 for more than a year now, and all my true fans know already that me sticking to a single mobile for more than a quarter must mean that I have a swine flu or something. Basically, Nokia E71 - despite some very annoying issues - is the best mobile phone I've been using so far. Really.